I’ve lived in my house in Torrance, California for 23 years now. Been in L.A. since I was 19 years old in 1976, back when then Governor Brown was telling us that we were “living in an era of diminished expectations.” He always was so ahead of the curve…

There’s an old joke that most of us baby boomers first heard when we were kids. Here’s the version I remember hearing in New Jersey:

A man goes on vacation and his brother agrees to housesit for him — feeding the cat, picking up the newspapers and mail, watering the plants, etc. After the first week goes by the vacationing brother phones to check in.

“I’m sorry bro,” his brother at the house tells him almost immediately, “but your cat died.”

“What!? What do you mean my cat died?! How could you tell me like this? What kind of insensitive creep are you!? You need to prepare someone for a shock like that!” exclaims the vacationing brother.

“How was I supposed to prepare you?” asks the man.

“Well,” says the brother, “first you should have told me, the cat is on the roof. Then you should have said, but don’t worry, we’re calling the fire department. Then the next time I called in to check you should have said, the fire department was doing everything it could and not to worry.

Then the next time I called you could tell me that the cat had fallen, but not to worry — the vet was doing everything she could to resuscitate him. Then, finally, after all that, you could have told me, my cat had died. That’s how you break news like that.”

“You’re right, bro, I’m sorry. I should have been more sensitive first,” said the housesitting brother, who really did feel bad about it at this point.

Wednesday, August 19 at 7pm South Bay 350 Climate Action Group comes to San Pedro for its first ever general membership meeting in the L.A. Harbor. We’ve been working with the San Pedro and Wilmington communities as well as Carson, Torrance and many other cities. Join us and find out about our active campaigns, and how you can get involved and take climate action.

When Chevron, or Phillips 66, or ExxonMobil or E&B oil companies give schools and nonprofits funding money they do it for one reason only.

To pay them to shut up.

You can fool yourself if you want to, but you can’t fool your kids, because in the end they will know their school, or that nonprofit pretending to be teaching kids about the environment, sold them out. Sold them out to the very oil companies who are destroying their chance of having a decent future.

And they will damn sure remember who went along for the ride to get that oil company money. Continue reading →

I was in Carson California last month at their City Council meeting to speak on behalf of the resolution I asked them to pass to approve participating in a feasibility study on community choice aggregation (CCA).

Carson was the sixth city to have our resolution on their agenda, the five others having already passed it. Like in each of the other cities, someone in Carson, this time the City Manager, had the same question for me,

“I understand all the CCA program stuff you’re telling us about Joe, but what I don’t get is what’s in it for YOU?”

That’s what someone always asks when I pitch them our South Bay Clean Power initiative, especially when they find out I’m doing this work full time. They want to know who is paying me.

When you work pro bono, turn down all job and consulting offers on the issue, and say “no,” to $18,000 a month gigs offered you by people in this growing field, people get real suspicious and uneasy.

Happily covering themselves in toxic waste, E&B Oil Drillers and their paid mercenaries in Hermosa Beach have been trying to float a bullshit story about a world made of plastic dependent on oil for its every need.

Like the British during the Revolutionary War, the Hermosa Red Coats speak another language and don’t understand Americans if they think people will fall for headlines like:

Without Oil A Day At The Beach Wouldn’t Be Much Fun

Even though it’s a crude canard long since disproven, and even though the leaders of the Idiocracy think that rubber is made from oil, the climate wreckers hope you won’t actually read Claudia Berman’s knockout take-down of their every talking point:

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The Creative Greenius

Welcome to Creative Greenius.
My name is Joe Galliani and I've been blogging as the Creative Greenius since October of 2007. I'm responsible for what you read here and I stand behind everything I write. I offer A Brighter Shade of Green that includes reporting, analysis, opinion, commentary and policy advisement.